Mersey landings – stage by stage

Jul 11 2007 by Peter Elson, Liverpool Daily Post

LIVERPOOL’S latest landing stage, tailor-made for cruise liners, is the fourth such construction built to overcome the Mersey’s great tidal range and race.

The corporation first advertised for the George’s Landing Stage design in the 1840s. The winner was given a 100 guinea prize by the adjudicating consulting engineer Lewis Cubitt and sent packing.

Cubitt decided the design was unworthy for its purpose and did it himself, awarding his own company the construction contract.

Costing £60,000, it was opened on June 1, 1847, and Thomas Cubitt then designed the adjacent Princes Landing Stage for the larger vessels on the Irish Sea, Welsh, Manx and Scottish routes.

When the Mersey Docks & Harbour Board engineer George Fosbury Lyster installed the floating roadway in 1873-4, the George’s and Princes Landings Stages were joined and became world’s largest floating structure, 2,063ft long by 80ft wide.

But disaster beckoned, as Liverpool historian Sir William Picton wrote: “This grand fabric had just been completed, and was waiting for the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh to be inaugurated, when on Tuesday, July 28, 1874, it came to destruction in a most unexpected and extraordinary manner.”

It was consumed in “a perfect saturnalia of the fire king” when a gas man’s blow torch set it alight. The stage was immediately rebuilt. Instead of using pitch pine, greenheart was employed, an extremely hard and fire resistant wood.

In 1895 Riverside station was completed allowing boat trains to come alongside the stage and vast numbers of passengers to be handled to destinations all over the world by sea.

During both World Wars millions of troops crossed the landing stage. For some, it was the first time they had set foot in Europe; for many others, their last contact with British territory.

This landing stage was demolished in 1974, after the permanent departure of Liverpool’s last liner, Elder Dempster Line’s flagship Aureol, relocated to Southampton.

It was replaced by the third landing stage, a £350,000 concrete construction that christened itself by sinking shortly after installation – and again, some 30-plus years later, this time terminally.

However, that stage, designed for Mersey Ferries and short sea traffic, was far too small to cope with today’s large cruise liners.